Nintendolife

Well, here’s a pleasant surprise for all the Life is Strange fans out there. After launching on PlayStation 5 last month, Square Enix has today announced that the series’ first proper sequel, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, will finally be landing on the Switch eShop on 19th November… wait, that’s tomorrow!

The news was revealed in a fresh animated trailer (above), which re-introduces us to the first game’s protagonist, Max Caulfield, and sets up the spooky goings-on that she’ll have to face this time. There’s been a murder (gasp), and it’s up to you and your time-shifting powers to solve it across dimensions.
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We Switch fans will get to go hands-on with this one tomorrow, when it arrives digitally on the eShop. Those who prefer things a little more physical, however, will have to wait for 28th January when Double Exposure launches in boxed form — “select retailers” will even offer a special steelbook to accompany it.

Doub..

Black Friday is almost upon us (heck, it’s already started for most retailers) so, naturally, the Switch eShop sales are about to start coming thick and fast.

One worthy of being highlighted today is Square Enix’s ‘Nintendo Cyber Deals’, which brings a swathe of delicious discounts to the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series. The sale kicks off on the North American eShop today (18th November) and runs until 1st December, so if you have been putting off purchasing I-VI since they arrived on Switch last April, this is your chance.
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Each title has been treated to a 25% discount and Square Enix teases that more games will be added in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out.

For now, at least, here are the games included:

Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster – $8.99 (25% off)

Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster – $8.99 (25% off)

Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster – $13.49 (25%)

Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster – $13.49 (25%)

Final Fantasy V P..

Final Fantasy. Kingdom Hearts. Mana. Dragon Quest. Chrono. Star Ocean. Valkyrie. Bravely. Square Enix has no shortage of RPG franchises under its belt, from those it’s developed in-house to beloved classics that it’s acquired over the years. But among all the space-faring action RPG and patisserie chef jobs, there’s one Square-developed franchise that manages to stand clear from the pack: SaGa.

SaGa made its mark on the world back in 1989 on the Game Boy, making it one of Square’s longest-running franchises. It’s never gained the popularity of its older cousin, yet SaGa has accumulated a die-hard following over the years for its dedication to being weird and different. Non-linear stories, ‘sparks’ and ‘glimmers,’ multiple playable protagonists, and multiple timelines are all par for the course here.

SaGa wouldn’t exist without one man in particular — Akitoshi Kawazu — so it’s only right that we start this deep dive into Square Enix’s weirdest series by looking at how the creator got ..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)When Marvelous revealed Farmagia during the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, we saw a familiar concept wrapped in an intriguing package: an action RPG with farm sim elements, like those so fundamental in two of the publisher’s biggest series, Rune Factory and Story of Seasons, but wrapped up in a monster-catching package. Instead of growing fruits of vegetables, you grow crops of monsters. And all of this is given form by Fairy Tail and Edens Zero creator Hiro Mashima’s distinctive artwork.

In this new RPG, we follow Ten and his friends who are all Farmagia — magical tamers (or farming mages) that can control and fight with monsters. Finding themselves in the middle of a war, Ten and his friends use the power of monsters – and friendship – to prevail over all obstacles.

The game is split into 2D and 3D sections. The former is common for dialogue between characters and visiting places such as the Magic Shop or Avrion Castle in the main city, Centvelt. 3D ..

Digital card games like Marvel Snap have seen a lot of success in recent years with short, satisfying matches that you can finish in a few minutes. The mobile release of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket almost seems like a direct answer to this trend. From uncomplicated card text to simplified rules, it axes much of the complexity of the original Pokémon TCG while still wrapping it up in an addictive collection loop that looks to have players checking their phones daily and maybe even spending real-world money on microtransactions to get more cards.

After spending a little too much time opening booster packs and battling friends and randoms, we can say TCG Pocket is as predatory as a Pidgeot stalking a Caterpie and more mesmerising than a Swoobat using Attract. On the collection side of things, at least.

TCG Pocket adopts quite a few mobile game tactics to capture your attention and never let it go. When you first sign up, you’re presented with a pack of Pokémon cards to rip open tha..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)Right. There’s a whole backstory — a whole mess of lore, as we like to call to it — with regards to Atooi’s Hatch Tales. You can read about it in detail here or, TL;DR, it’s six years late releasing and its Kickstarter backers have been rightly miffed, and more than a little concerned.

Anyway, it’s here now, and when this particular writer first clapped eyes on its mobile phone aesthetic, well, we’ve never been more convinced we were about to be treated to an absolute disaster. However, this is not the case. Surprise surprise, haters, Hatch Tales is actually very good.

It might not heal all wounds, as Atooi was notoriously poor at communicating its plans of action throughout development, and if we could mark it down for this stuff we would, but the fact is that the game itself is a very smart and fiendishly addictive little treat.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
There’s not really too much to explain in terms of the game..

Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl!

Before we get cracking with this week’s battle, let’s see how things panned out last time. We took a look at Balloon Fight for the NES, a bonafide Joust-inspired classic from legendary developers such as Satoru Iwata and Yoshio Sakamoto. It was a close call on this one, but ultimately the pixel art black box seen in the US won the day with 42% of the vote. Japan managed 33%, while Europe scored 24%.

This week, we’re sticking with the NES to look at another classic: Kid Icarus. Released in 1986 in Japan and 1987 in the west, Kid Icarus went on to become a true favourite amongst Nintendo fans. Masahiro Sakurai’s 3DS sequel, Kid Icarus: Uprising, is also largely considered to be one of the handheld’s best games.

It’s another three-way brawl this week, and the participants share quite a bit in common with last week’s Balloon Fight in terms of their overall approach. Let’s get to it.

Be sure to cast your votes in the poll below;..

Open-world games have evolved a lot in the 19 years since the original Yakuza was released. Quirky fetch quests and meandering storytelling were often characteristics of the genre, as was the sense that the developers were gleefully mashing together ideas and holding everything together with an offbeat sense of humour. It’s a positive, then, that this 2017 remake, Yakuza Kiwami, now released on the Switch, updated and modernised much of the 2005 original, so much so that they’re effectively two distinct games.

For example, the remake completely overhauls the original’s fixed-perspective, Resident Evil-style Tokyo streets. The 2005 game featured just one combat style, while the remake has four — Rush, Brawler, Beast, and Dragon — a development first seen in a similar way in the much-superior 2015 prequel Yakuza 0. The game’s story was also significantly fleshed out by developing an important subplot concerning the game’s tragic antagonist, Nishiki.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handhel..